Went in Law & Order SVU

I'd like to think that my being here is inevitable. I am a huge Law and Order junkie. Law and Order, Special Victims Unit, Criminal Intent. I watch them all. Kind of obsessively. So when the opportunity arose I had to say yes.

It's the first episode of the season so I'm imagining that that had been on the stove for some time. And I first got the script maybe a week and a half before shooting started. It is definitely a character that kind of jumped off the page. There's a lot of edge. A lot of layers. Someone who is kind of a thorn in the side of Stabler and Bensen which is a dynamic I was looking forward to.

He is definitely an outsider to this dynamic that has been running for some time which kind of parralels my experience as an actor because Law and Order SVU is of course ten seasons down the road and I am coming into this completely fresh. But there are a couple of interesting reversals in the course of the story where Bensen and Stabler kind of get the rug pulled out from under them. Curtesy of my character which is fun.

It took a couple of readings. I think the writing is that good. It's great writing for TV which is harder to come by than you might think. I think this is one of the best shows out there. From the writing to the editing to the directing to the acting which is why I wanted to be a part of it. So peeling back the layers of Nate Kendall took some time and challenged me in a way that I really enjoyed.

I think it was the humour. There is a very dry black humour at work. You know he is not a character that is only relentless that is only pissed off, only disengaged. There are a lot of different curves to the arc of his story. And when I realised that that opening scene where he's got the gun in the mouth of the convict which was shot in a very interesting way. I was not actually looking at the actor who is playing the convict. I'm looking directly at the camera. It becomes a scene about me terrorising this criminal threatening him with violence but also in a strange and revealing way I'm also talking about myself. So a lot of what you see my character expressing in the course of the episode is revealing and exposing in ways in which he probably never intended.

The first time we sat in the interrogation room together we were about to do our lines and I started giggling a little bit and the two of them looked at me as if I was kind of crazy. I felt this weird kind of...I had this parallel experience of an actor with other actors, in a room with other actors, and being me in a room with Stabler and Bensen and it was really kind of trippy because I have been watching them work for years. I am a huge fan of what they bring to the table every single episode. Which feels so honest rightious without being self rightious. It was a pleasure to have a seat at that table.

I think there is a lot of potential there. I can't say too much but the episode does end in this very kind of serious cliff hanger with a lot of loose ends and I feel as though it is the sort of character that hopefully audiences will want to see more of even if the real characters on the show hope that they never see him again. So we'll see. We'll see.